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Published: November 15th 2008
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I have to be honest. We spoiled ourselves in Fiji. After all our good intentions of staying at the backpackers didn't pay off, and we were desperate for something to book quickly, we chose Treasure Island and stuck it on the credit card. Ok it was a bit naughty of us, but after reading some reviews of some of the backpacker islands we thought we probably made the right decision - it would be awful to go to Fiji and find that it was grubby, noisy, glass on the beaches hell...
So Treasure Island it was! We flew into Nadi at about 4pm and found the Raffles Gateway Hotel to be very nice - and right opposite the airport, couldn't have been easier. We jumped in a taxi to head off into Nadi to get a few bits of shopping and see what was around, although we had been warned that Nadi is a bit of a dump. It's true it wasn't the best-looking place, but it was interesting to see - ramshackle houses with one or two rooms that probably housed huge families with washing strung up on every available ledge (funnily enough this is sounding like the campervan!).
People hassling us everywhere for taxis and we soon felt a bit out of our depth! Still, we struggled on as we had read about a Japanese restaurant (Daikoku) in the Lonely Planet and we are never undeterred when on a sushi hunt 😊
It paid off, Daikoku had been moved to the next village, but it was peanuts in a taxi and the sushi was great 😊 We watched people cooking tepanyaki on the hotplates in front of us, and couldn't believe how much tiny Japanese girls can eat. Where do they put it? Jealous!
After an early night and an early start we got on the bus to Denarau Port to get our catermaran over to Treasure Island. We were extremely excited, almost not daring to be too excited in case it didn't live up to our rather high expectations of paradisical pacific islands. Anyway, the cat only took half an hour or so and we could see as soon as we approached our tiny Treasure Island that we were not going to be disappointed at all. The sea was like glass that day, there was not even the tiniest ripple - absolutely stunning. The island
looked like it was hovering on a halo of bright white sand, with great big palm trees and coconut umbrellas - it was quite simply heaven. The water was as clear as clear could be - we could see straight to the bottom off the boat where there was coral all round the island and we were getting very excited about our snorkling/diving opportunities.
Treasure Island is 15 square acres, with 64 bures. It is one resort on the island, the only thing there and is based around a couple of beautiful pools, one infinity pool that was quite simply heaven, a large restaurant, a bar, a dive shop, a watersports shop (free kayaks, windsurfing stuff, snorkling stuff), one shop which came in handy for mosquito spray! Our bure was absolutely beautiful and there were honeymoon presents on the bed for us - a special Treasure Island sarong (or sulu as they call them) for each of us, a bottle of champagne and some sliced fruit. Outside our bure it was 10 steps to the beach and at the front was a lovely double hammock which we climbed into and drank the champagne giggling like school children and completely
unable to take in how wonderful it all was.
We had 5 nights on the island which seemed like an eternity. Although there was lots to do - and we did make the most of the free snorkling and kayaking and windsurfing particularly, we completely relaxed, read books (yes, you did see that right!), chattered, drank cocktails and generally had a beautiful time. We did a dive on about day 3 that was really nice - no need for wetsuits out here! It was a bit of a cruisy dive really as we had unwittingly been put on boat with a load of beginners, but after R's experience with bad air on the last one I think it was a good way for him to go back under the water.
I think second to the island itself the next best thing was undoubtedly the snorkling. 5 metres off the beach we were regularly seeing a whole host of colourful fish, noisy parrot fish as usual, as many as we did on the Barrier Reef, lots of black tipped sharks (which seem a whole lot scarier when you're not completely under the water and not in a wetsuit for
some reason!) and some beautiful coral.
One day we kayakked over to Beachcomber Island which was our nearest island and the backpacker one. It didn't look too bad but we were happy we'd chosen Treasure Island 😊 We ate dinner at the restaurant every night although one night we had their special flambe menu and one night we had dinner in their 'sunset bure' which was our own private bure on the water's front where we had a four course dinner and were personally served. It was beautiful and sooo romantic 😊
To be honest after 5 days of chilling out in such a major way we were ready to get going again, but we were very glad we'd made the effort to go to Fiji and would completely recommend it to anyone wanting a little slice of heaven and some serious R&R.
Next stop, and last stop, Thailand!!!
C&R xxx
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